


Pilot's Prayer

by Verlaine



Category: Riptide (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-09
Updated: 2012-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-30 20:58:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verlaine/pseuds/Verlaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Give us just another two minutes worth of fuel, so I can at least get her on the ground. So I can buy my guys some kind of a chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pilot's Prayer

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to hardboiledbaby for good advice and beta work.

_Please Lord, bless this helicopter and those who fly in her . . ._

The Mimi was falling sideways out of the sky.

Despite Nick's best efforts, she kept slewing clockwise, barely controllable, the tail-rotor response so sluggish it was all he could do to keep her nose pointed more or less eastward. He'd managed to slow their rate of descent, but with the amount of damage they'd taken, his options were limited. Not that it would matter much longer: the way the oil pressure was sinking, the main rotor speed was going to drop below the lift co-efficient any minute, and then she and her passengers were going down like so much pink scrap metal.

Taking enemy fire in the air was always a bitch. But when the bastards shooting at you knew enough about choppers to know where to aim, FUBAR was pretty well guaranteed.

Over land it could have been— _maybe_ —a controllable disaster. In-country, Nick had set down more than once in a chopper that could have done double duty as a colander. Set down and walked away, with everybody in it alive to tell the story in the mess-tent after. But out here, five miles from shore, it was the end of the line. Hitting deep water from altitude was the equivalent of hitting concrete. And unlike a fixed-wing, where he might have been able to tease out some glide even on a dead-stick landing, the Mimi simply wasn't built to function without an engine.

Deliberately, Nick closed his mind to all the things he couldn’t change. Fear was a distraction he couldn’t afford right now. He fixed his eyes on the dark blur on the horizon that was the coastline and narrowed his focus down to pedals, stick and cyclic. Those skills were ingrained deeply enough to be instinct.

_. . . especially the pistons. Though the oil line could use some help today, too. We're leaking like a sieve back there._

A sticky tickling feeling along his belt line made him squirm in his flight harness. Slight as it was, the movement interrupted the careful balancing waltz he’d maintained with the pedals. Mimi growled her displeasure, a deep unhappy sound somewhere between grinding and tearing. The pedals, already mushy and slow to respond, locked entirely for a second. Mimi coughed and dipped sharply to the left, so Nick was looking almost straight down at the whitecaps below. With a snarl he hauled on the cyclic, trying with sheer force of will to hold her steady. There was another cough, and then Mimi slowly straightened up. He didn't need to look at the altimeter to know they'd lost some more precious maneuvering room. 

He spared one glance over his shoulder down into the cargo bay, where Murray was dragging himself on his elbows towards the Roboz, a thick trail of blood smeared on the deck plates behind him. At some point, when Nick still had enough control over the helicopter to try evasive action, he'd been bounced hard enough to lose his headset, so Nick could no longer hear his soft hitching whimpers of pain.

_Bless Murray Bozinsky, and let him be all right. He's tougher than we are—he jumps into this shit with nothing but his heart and his brains to get him through. Everybody thinks we look after him, but he's the one who keeps saving our tails. He's the only Boz we've got—please don't let him get killed because he trusted me._

Beside Nick, Cody hung limp in the co-pilot's harness, head down on his chest. He hadn't moved since the spray of bullets across the cockpit had driven him against Mimi's unyielding instrument panel, and Nick couldn't look at him at all. As long as he didn't look, he could keep believing Cody was still breathing. 

Nick had to believe Cody was breathing. He was the pilot and Murray was still alive: no matter what, his duty was to get Murray down somewhere safe. After that . . .

Well, after that Cody would just have to keep breathing some more.

_Bless Cody Allen, the best friend a guy ever had. The guy I love. He never asked and I never said, but that's the truth, the only truth I need. He's been everything bright and clean and good in my life all these years. Please get him out of this alive._

Slowly, too slowly, the line of the horizon grew thicker. It didn’t seem to be getting clearer, though. A grey fog was creeping in on the edge of Nick's vision, blurring and softening everything. He blinked fiercely and shook his head, then rubbed his left eye on his shoulder to try to clear it. What you couldn’t see could kill you; that was a lesson hard-learned and never forgotten.

The movement brought back the tickling on his stomach, even more irritating this time, and joined by a clammy crawling feeling around his legs. For the first time Nick took his eyes off the windscreen to look down. For a long moment what he was seeing didn't really make sense. 

He was covered in strawberry Jello.

He shook his head again to clear the fuzz from behind his eyes, and felt his breath catch on a sudden tearing jolt of pain. The tickling was blood, running down his body, forming a puddle in the lap of his cargos and draining from there over his thighs onto the seat. He stared at it stupidly, vaguely realizing that some of his problems handling the Mimi might not be her fault.

_Not doing so great myself here, just between you and me. Looks to me like I'm leaking almost as much as Mimi is right now. Keep me upright and on the stick long enough to get us down. Won't ask for more than that._

When he looked up, he could see breakers below, foaming onto a rocky beach, with a steep rise of ochre rock looming behind it.

_Though some help with the altimeter right now would be good too._

Nick tried to coax Mimi into a little lift, just enough that they wouldn't crash head-on into the cliff, and after a heart-stopping pause she responded listlessly. They staggered across the top of the ridge, Nick wearily grateful the California coast didn't run much to big trees.

That thought dragged him back to pain-filled alertness: they were over land. And maybe, just maybe, he could find a place to set down. Maybe this would be another one to walk away from.

_Give us just another two minutes worth of fuel, so I can at least get her on the ground. So I can buy my guys some kind of a chance._

_And if that isn't the way it's meant to work out, then . . ._

_Let me go with them, okay?_

"Amen."


End file.
